I’m feeling quite disgusted after reading ‘Sexist Topman T-shirts taken off shelves’ in today’s Guardian. The two withdrawn were promoting domestic violence and basically just down right offensive to women. It makes no sense why Sir Phillip Green would allow his company to produce these items of clothing when Topshop’s audience is predominantly female. Even after showing my boyfriend the slogan on one of the T-shirts ( ‘Nice new girlfriend. What breed is she?’), I never heard a laugh or a comment of it being acceptable to sell. Topshop has always seemed one of the more ‘upmarket’ stores in my eyes but after reading this article my views on the company have severely been questioned. What does everyone else think?

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I also saw this in The Guardian today and the fact that Topman “would like to stress that these T-shirts were meant to be light-hearted and carried no serious meaning,” clearly shows that they thought the topic of domestic violence was acceptable to print on a t-shirt to appear humourous and generate profit. Control on what text appears on t-shirts needs to be tighter, there are many examples of obscene pictures or text that can be bought and worn by anyone, anywhere. This means that children can read them and repeat what they see. You would never see these images on tv at three in the afternoon so why is it acceptable for shops and markets to sell them or people to wear them at this time?

Im surprised these shirts even made the shelves! In this day and age still many women are made to feel like lesser humans due to the actions of an abusive partner, and topman seem to be by all accounts supporting this?? What on earth were a company like topshop thinking!!?

I actually saw this t-shirt while browsing the Topman website a few weeks ago and it put me off buying anything. Aside from the fact that it’s tasteless, the ‘What breed is she?’ design doesn’t even make sense as a joke. Everyone who reads the words on your torso has an ugly girlfriend?

This is just one example of the inherant misogyny in our society. There is an unconcious sexism that prevails through everything we do and this is more proof of that. When topman say “to be light-hearted and carried no serious meaning” they mirror a sentiment in our world that says it is ok to demean women.

People may say that it’s not that bad, that these things are just meant to be fun. In a way they are right, no one was actually harmed by the creation of these tshirts; but this, almost unconcious, belief that women are inferiour and should be the subject of humour and degradation allows a 12 year old girl to be sold to marriage http://tinyurl.com/6fbjktn, allows a woman to be legally killed for being raped http://tinyurl.com/5rtvmmj , http://tinyurl.com/69o857w , and in this country -according to women aid- there are 1300 calls every day to police in regards to domestic violence.